Turkey (Թուրքիա), which encompases much of historic Armenia, today has a small Armenian community estimated at 40 to 70,000 remaining in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), one small Armenian village of Vakifli at Musa Dagh (on the Med. Sea by Syria), some remaining settlements in Sasun, and otherwise, with the exception of the Hamshen Armenians, virtually no other Armenians remain in Turkey.

Laws on Minority Foundations

Only 2,500 buildings:

According to the Treaty of Lausanne, there are about nine or 10 non-Muslim minority communities in Turkey. They make up about 125,000 people: approximately 70,000 Armenians, 20,000 Jews, 10,000 Bahais, 3,000 Catholic Nasturis, 2,500 Greeks, 2,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, 1,500 Protestants and 100 Adventists. They have a total of 161 foundations.

The number of their properties that cause us problems is 2,471.

Foundations for Greeks, Armenians, Jews and other non-Muslim minority groups have worked since Ottoman times to keep their places of worship up and running. These foundations had no limitations imposed on them during the Ottoman period but were forced to disclose the properties they own after the founding of the republic. Each disclosed the full extent of properties they owned.

Between 1936 and 1974 they faced no limitations. The funds they received were mostly bequeathed by members of their communities.

After the 1974 Cyprus military intervention, a decision by the Supreme Court of Appeals changed everything. It decided that these foundations had no legal authority and had to transfer all properties and funds they had received between 1936 and 1974.

The Treasury seized all the properties obtained between 1936 and 1974, either selling them off to others or keeping them. All objections raised by the foundations were rejected.

When Turkey applied to become a European Union member, everything changed. According to the Copenhagen Criteria, limitations imposed on the foundations had to be lifted. The properties seized needed to be returned. Ankara promised the EU that it would do so, or pay compensation. The amendment process of the foundations laws began but the bureaucracy resisted. Despite all the efforts of the Foreign Ministry and the EU General Secretariat, the revised law is still yet to pass.

(The above information is from Mehmet Ali Birand's column in the Turkish Daily News on 2005/5/1)

On September 20, 2005, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled for the return of real estate belonging to minority foundations.

In the first trial, Fener Greek Boy's School Foundation and Yedikule Surp Prigic Armenian Hospital Foundation demanded the return of properties, which they owned between 1936 and 1974, but which were handed over to their previous owners following a Court of Appeals' ruling in 1974. The decision will expectedly be announced in the upcoming months.

During yesterday's hearing at the ECHR, lawyers represent the foundations claimed that Turkey had violated one of the articles of European Convention on Human Rights concerning the protection of properties.

In addition, they told me that the institutions defined as minority foundations by the Lausanne Treaty have the right to own property assets.

On the other side, Turkish legal representatives explained the necessary legal amendments were realized during Turkey's European Union (EU) process, including the development of the Foundations Bill, which is now pending in the Turkish Parliament.

According to an arrangement dated 2002, religious minority foundations were entitled to own real estate.

The ECHR decision will determine the future of properties belonging to nearly 900 foundations, which changed hands following the decision by the Court of Appeals.

Since the General Directorate of Foundations does not disclose the number of real estate handed over to third persons due to confidentiality, it is not exactly known how many foundations' properties will be affected by the ECHR decision.

EUROPEAN HUMAN RIGHTS CASE BEING CLOSELY MONITORED IN U.S.
Key Committee To Hold Mark-Up On Genocide Resolution

Washington, DC - The European Court of Human Rights is expected to announce a decision next week on the property rights of minority foundations. Specifically, the Court will adjudicate two cases filed by the Soorp Purgich Armenian Hospital Foundation and the Fener Greek Boys High School Foundation against Turkey.

In both cases, property gifted to the Armenian and Greek foundations were seized as the Turkish courts upheld orders declaring that the bequest violated a decree disallowing non-Moslems from donating real estate. If the court rules in favor of the foundations, hundreds of buildings seized in the past may be returned.

Earlier this year, Armenian Assembly Board Member and former Board of
Directors Chairman Van Krikorian testified before the Helsinki
Commission on freedom of religion in Turkey with respect to the
Armenian Church and community. During his testimony Krikorian noted
that "for centuries, Armenians paid and in many places still pay a
high price for their Christianity," and that seizure and destruction
of Armenian Church property was commonplace. Krikorian noted that in
1914, in Turkey, there were approximately 5,000 Armenian Churches,
seminaries and schools registered by the Patriarchate and that today,
90 years after the Armenian Genocide, there are less than 50 Armenian
Churches under the Patriarchate's jurisdiction. Krikorian also
pointed to the Soorp Purgich Armenian Hospital as example of how the
Treaty of Lausanne and other international standards for protecting
religious rights are not being upheld, and urged the Helsinki
Commission to play a critical leadership in addressing these issues.

Jeff King, President of International Christian Concern, who also
testified before the Commission, called the expected decision by the
European Court "an opportunity to right a long-standing injustice and
an opportunity for Turkey to utilize this opportunity to strengthen
its commitment to democratic reforms and to uphold its international
obligations to protect its citizens." International Christian Concern
(ICC) is a non-profit and interdenominational human rights
organization dedicated to assisting and sustaining Christians who are
victims of persecution and discrimination due to practicing their
faith. ICC's website is www.persecution.org.

At the same time that the European Human Rights Court is considering
this matter, in the United States, the House International Relations
Committee is scheduled to review another human rights issue;
affirmation of the Armenian Genocide. The Committee will mark-up
H. Res. 316, a bipartisan, pan-Armenian resolution, which reaffirms
the United States record on the Armenian Genocide, and was introduced
by Armenian Caucus Members George Radanovich (R-CA) and Adam Schiff
(D-CA), along with Caucus Co-Chairs Joe Knollenberg (R-MI) and Frank
Pallone (D-NJ).

"The anticipated European Court action is one of many venues in which
Turkey's human and minority rights are being reviewed. Tomorrow, the
House International Relations Committee will consider legislation,
which affirms the Armenian Genocide and the American role in alerting
the international community and launching an unprecedented
humanitarian campaign to save the survivors," said Armenian Assembly
Executive Director Bryan Ardouny. "Over the last weeks and months,
the community has rallied its support behind H. Res. 316 and we are
confident about tomorrow's mark-up," added Ardouny.

Editor's Note: The testimony of Van Krikorian and Jeff King before the
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Commission)
regarding Religious Freedom in Turkey can be found at www.csce.org.

NR#2005-091

50TH ANNIVERSARY OF POGROMS IN ISTANBUL

By Hakob Chakrian

AZG Armenian Daily #159
07/09/2005

Turkish Papers Highlight the Event

With an aim to prevent future tragedies, all central Turkish newspapers
highlighted yesterday the events of September 6 1955 when authorities
in Istanbul organized massacres. On September 5, the eve of the
pogroms, a bomb went off in the house where Kemal Atatürk was born in
Thessalonica. The explosion only broke the windows of the house, and
Greek law enforcers detained law student at Thessalonica University,
Oktay Engin, and the guard of Turkish consulate.

The consulate was located right by the house. The arrested student,
Turkish agent as disclosed later, was soon released under Turkey's
diplomatic pressure and soon fled to Turkey. He was given a position
in Istanbul municipality and was appointed governor of Nevsehir
after graduation.

These facts make clear that the explosion in Thessalonica was a state
organized provocation to open doors for pogroms of Greek, Armenian
and Jewish minorities of Turkey.

Turkish state radio aired the news of explosion at 1.30 pm local time.
Istanbul-based Ekspres paper informed about the explosion at 4.30 pm
local time September 6. Representative of "Turkish republic of Northern
Cyprus", Kmail Onal, makes a statement on the pages of the paper,
"Those attacking our sanctities will pay high price". 2 hours later,
members of student unions and representatives of the "Turkish republic
of Northern Cyprus" gather at the square of Bera in Tksim. The mob
is armed with knives and bludgeons. The pogroms start after speeches.

The Turkish mob robs firstly the stores of the Greeks then churches
and homes killing residents and lynching Greek priests. Armenians
and Jews are not spared massacres, and the anti-Greek pogroms soon
flowed into massacre of all non-Muslims.

Greeks of Istanbul's considerably big Greek community headed for their
fatherland after the pogroms. Repatriation continued till 1960s. Today
there are only 2000 Greeks in Istanbul. The number of Armenians there
is around 50.000.

As there are almost no Greeks in Istanbul and the Jews are not
favorable to attack, Armenians, as a rule, suffer Turkish mob's
aggression. A cause is always at hand: recognition of the Armenian
Genocide in various parliaments and the Nagorno Karabakh issue.

The point here is that no matter how reformed Turkey becomes,
it still needs squaring off with its history. That history is
continuous. Armenian Genocide was carried out in days of the Young
Turks. The September 6 pogroms were carried out in modern Turkey
founded by Kemal Atatürk and in days of Adnan Menderes' Democratic
Party. Times are changing, self-consciousness of the Turks should
also change.

ISTANBUL - Tucked away for more than 40 years, the 120 black-and-white photographs hanging in a gallery here have the stark appearance and potential emotional impact of evidence presented in a legal proceeding.

Karsi Gallery

One of the photographs from the Karsi Gallery collection, from 1955.

This article is exclusive to the Web. And that, it turns out, is what they are.

One image shows a mob outside a row of storefronts, with some people
watching passively and others cheering as a shop is ransacked. A
young man stands with his half-clenched fist raised in the air, as if
he is egging on the vandals; his other hand rests passively on his
hip, suggesting nonchalance. A boy stares up numbly, as if looking in
vain for answers. Above him, a man in the shell of the shop's wrecked
building heaves a baby carriage to the street below.

Fifty years ago this month, erroneous reports spread that Greeks had
set fire to the childhood home of Kemal Atatürk, modern Turkey's
founder, in Salonika, Greece. The rumors prompted an angry mob to
converge on Taksim Square in Istanbul for an anti-foreigner pogrom
that left thousands of houses and many hundreds of shops destroyed.

Gallery officials said about a dozen people were killed, but the
death toll has never been confirmed because of official secrecy.
Cemeteries were desecrated, dozens of churches were burned, and many
schools were plundered.

Fahri Coker, a former assistant military prosecutor, served as a
legal adviser to the military investigation of the events of Sept.
6-7, 1955, an inquiry that historians describe as a whitewash. Coker
had 250 photographs taken by foreign news photographers and
government employees, and even a few by Ara Guler, one of Turkey's
few internationally known photographers. Judge Coker held on to the
pictures and left word that they could be displayed only after his
death, which occurred in 2001.

To mark the 50-year anniversary of the long night of violence, Karsi,
a gallery in the Beyoglu neighborhood, where the pogrom occurred,
organized an exhibition of the photos to open on Sept. 6. Although
curators were no doubt aware that the pictures would arouse strong
feelings, given the emotion surrounding historical discussions in
Turkey, they have been surprised by the passions unleashed by the
show.

The Sept. 6 opening was disrupted by a group of nationalists who
entered the gallery, carrying a Turkish flag. Chanting slogans like
"Turkey, love it or leave it!," they vandalized some of the
photographs and tossed others out the window. They also threw eggs at
the pictures, leaving a vivid testimonial to how controversial free
expression remains in Turkey.

"We left it that way, but unfortunately, after a few days it started
to smell," Ozkan Taner, one of the gallery's directors, said of the
exhibition, which the gallery then cleaned and restored. It remains
on view through Sept. 26.

News of the attacks spread quickly to the front pages of the Turkish
papers and to television and radio news broadcasts, turning the show
into a national topic of conversation.

Attendance has been heavy, easily exceeding expectations. On a recent
day, dozens of people crowded into the gallery to study the images.
The pictures, as might be expected, show faces riven by anger and
fear, but the photos are also packed with small surprises.

One centers on the familiar monument at the center of Taksim Square,
so crowded with young protesters that some are falling off as others
rise to take their places. At the top of the image, a small group is
working to hoist the Turkish flag, while a young man in a crisp,
clean suit holds unsteadily over his head a small portrait of
Atatürk. But away from the monument, the people in the crowd turning
to face the photographer have blank, uncertain expressions, as if
they are as unnerved by the outpouring as many of the gallery's
visitors have been.

In the beginning, the photo exhibition was hailed as a major step
forward for a country trying to show a more democratic face in
preparation for possible membership in the European Union.

"For the first time in the history of Turkey, a shameful happening
has been brought out into the open," said Ishak Alaton, chairman of
the Alarko Holding company and a leader of Turkey's tiny population
of Jews. "September 6, 1955, was our Kristallnacht."

Ozcan Yurdalan, a freelance photographer here who took part in a
recent news conference denouncing the attacks on the exhibition, said
the straightforward documentary style of the photos made them more
disturbing.

"They show directly what they saw in life," he said. "If you take
straight photographs, they show the reality - the faces of the
people, some fearful, some thinking, Yeah, we are doing something
well against our enemy."

"The pictures showed me this is not the past," he said. "We are still
living in the same condition today. I am ashamed of that, and also
very fearful."

Greek-Turkish tensions over the future of Cyprus were running high in
1955, and the future of that island remains unresolved, threatening
to hold up Turkey's bid to begin negotiations to join the European
Union. More broadly, Western ideas of the rightful role of dissent
have made limited inroads in Turkey. The acclaimed author Orhan Pamuk
has been charged with "public denigrating of Turkish identity" for
telling a newspaper: "Thirty-thousand Kurds were killed here, one
million Armenians as well. And almost no one talks about it."

Mehmet Guleryuz, an Abstract Expressionist-style painter who helped
organize a protest against the attack on the exhibition, said: "We're
going through sensitive times. We have to have the ability to open up
hidden parts of our history and deal with it. We have to have the
ability to argue."

Balakian Letter

To the Editors:

Christopher de Bellaigue's "Left Out in Turkey" explores important
aspects of Turkey's long history of problems with its minority peoples
and Turkey's current efforts to improve its record, but in his
observations on Turkey's dealings with the Armenian genocide and its
aftermath, important facts are left out.

Although Mr. de Bellaigue notes that more than a dozen countries have
recognized the Armenian genocide (there are in fact twenty countries
that have done so), he fails to note how truculent the Turkish
government's response to this growing movement has been.

In asking the Turkish government to acknowledge its crimes against the
Armenians in 1915, the German Bundestag made perhaps the most thoughtful
and resonant statement to Turkey yet made by a governmental body. In its
resolution of June 15, the Bundestag "deplore[d] the deeds of the Young
Turk government in the Ottoman Empire which have resulted in the almost
total annihilation of the Armenians in Anatolia." Refusing to be
self-righteous (Germany was Turkey's World War I ally), the Bundestag
acknowledged its own crimes against the Armenian people and concluded
with a deeply democratic statement acknowledging "from its own national
experience how hard it is for every people to face the dark sides of its
past" and asserted "that facing one's own history fairly and squarely is
necessary" and is an essential part of "the European culture of
remembrance to which belongs the open discussion of the dark sides of
each national history."

Instead of heeding this advice, the Turkish government is going in the
other direction. Turkey has made diplomatic threats and canceled
business contracts, pulled its embassy out of France (briefly) after the
French recognized the genocide in 2000, and scrapped state meetings with
Poland for the same reason this past April. Ankara is now threatening to
pass resolutions about genocides they claim these countries have
committed. No countries' records are clean, but they will have to search
far back to get the Swedes and the Swiss on this.

Recently, Turkey's Ministry of Education ordered that the national
curriculum must teach students that there was no genocide committed
against the Armenians and that all such ideas are groundless. The
Turkish Historical Society, a state-controlled organization, published a
book, The Armenians: Expulsion and Migration, that was vigorously
promoted in Turkey and billed as the final word on the subject. Turkish
historian Taner Akçam has called the book "a crime against scholarship"
in the recent issue of Journal of Genocide Research, because the authors
falsify the history of 1915 by altering the foreign office records of
the United States, France, Germany, and other countries whose records
testify to a systematic plan of race extermination.

The Ankara Chamber of Commerce spent an estimated $1 million concocting
a promotional DVD on Turkey, and paid the European edition of Time to
package it with the June 6 issue. The DVD contains an hour-long segment
that presents a counterfeit version of the events of 1915, blaming the
victims for their fate and absolving Turkey of any responsibility for
the eradication of the Armenians of Anatolia. In late June, in Bremen,
Germany, Turkish organizations opened an exhibit of photographs and
texts that purport Armenians massacred more than a half-million Turks.
This absurdity has become a claim of the Turkish government in recent
months. The International Association of Genocide Scholars
conservatively puts the Armenian death toll at over a million, while
many historians put it at 1.5 million. Several years ago, one could find
that Ankara would assent to 600,000 Armenian deaths, then it was
400,000, then 300,000, and now it's down to 200,000. Pretty soon no
Armenians will have died.

In the face of rational world opinion, might not this be a moment for
the Turkish government to pause and to be a bit self-evaluative? For it
is not only Armenians who are asking Turkey to face its past, but the
mainstream scholarly and human rights culture, as well as numerous
governments. The International Association of Genocide Scholars (the
largest body of experts on the subject) recently sent an open letter to
Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan that summarizes the unambiguous scholarly
record on the Armenian genocide.

Serious democracy is rooted in free intellectual discourse, in educational curricula that are not directed by the government, and in a society's capacity for rigorous, critical self-evaluation in its public life. The good news is that a small but brave culture of Turkish scholars and writers has emerged in the past decade, like those who were in Istanbul to participate in the May 25 conference on the Armenian genocide that was sadly stopped when Turkish authorities called it treason. These writers are devoted to the serious study of the eradication of the Armenians in 1915, and if they are allowed to express themselves freely they might be able to lead their culture into a new age.

Peter Balakian
Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities
Colgate University
Hamilton, New York

Turkey's Brutal WWII-Era Wealth Tax

The voluntary tax systems of the United States and many other countries
aren't perfect, but they sure beat the heck out of the alternative.
Consider, for example, life under a regime where tax rates aren't made
public, assessments are arrived at in secret, and failure-to-comply
penalties include banishment to forced labor camps.

This week we present a fascinating article by DAVID JOULFAIAN on a
wealth tax adopted by Turkey in 1942 that included all of the above
unpleasantries. In the midst of World War II, Turkish citizens also were
victims of a monstrous tax system that they were powerless to change.
Joulfaian describes the discriminatory nature of the wealth tax, a
lopsided levy shouldered by the minority Christian and Jewish
populations in the predominately Muslim nation, and the misguided fiscal
policies that allowed the tax to take root in the first place (p. 915).

...

THE ULTIMATE DEATH TAX (page 915)

Wealth taxes are common in many countries, and represent one of the
oldest forms of taxation. Local governments in the United States, for
instance, levy annual property taxes. Annual wealth taxes are levied in
several European countries as well. The estate tax is the only wealth
tax levied by the U.S. government and applies to wealth held at death.
The wealthy are at times also taxed at progressive tax rates on their
earnings in addition to being exposed to wealth taxes. Governments levy
those taxes to diversify their sources of revenues, augment and protect
the income tax base, and regulate the distribution of income and the
concentration of wealth. Governments may resort to additional taxes in
times of national emergency.

A general guiding principle for any tax system is that it should be
sufficiently transparent to enable a taxpayer to construct the size of
wealth or income subject to tax, as well as the ensuing tax liability.
For local property taxes, for instance, cities inform property owners of
the assessed value of their real estate and the amount of tax they owe.
For income and estate taxes, taxpayers report the amount of income
received and the size of terminal wealth to the government. Once the
taxable amount is established, a tax rate schedule is applied to
determine the tax liability. Taxpayers are able to appeal assessments
and are given adequate time to prepare their documents and make
provisions for paying the amounts owed.

A student of taxation may encounter many fascinating features of the
various taxes levied throughout history, dating back to ancient Egypt
and the Roman Empire. Yet no tax system rivals the peculiarities of a
tax employed in the middle of the 20th century. On the morning of
November 12, 1942, the citizens of Turkey woke up to the most draconian
wealth tax ever envisaged. While the tax in theory applied to the entire
predominantly Muslim nation, in practice much of its burden rested with
the minority Christian and Jewish communities who primarily resided in
Istanbul, formerly known as Constantinople. Neither the rate of taxation
nor the taxable base and its derivation were made public. Tax
assessments were arrived at in secret, and individuals were directed to
settle their government assessed liabilities within two weeks, without
any appeal provisions in place. The penalty for Christians and Jews who
failed to do so within a month was deportation to forced labor camps in
eastern Turkey in addition to having their property confiscated. The tax
was initially also extended to Christian and Jewish schools, as well as
to churches and synagogues, but not to Muslim institutions, because they
were owned or funded by the government. As documented by Faik Okte, the
Turkish Ministry of Finance official in charge of implementing the tax,
assessments were determined arbitrarily because the authorities lacked
information on the income and properties of the minority groups./1/

The Turkish National Assembly passed the tax on November 11, 1942
(Law 4305/12.11.1942), and its decision to levy the tax was published
the next day in the government official newspaper, Resmi Gazete. The
details of the structure and inner workings of the tax were kept secret
by the government. The details, however, were revealed and made public
some five years after its enactment in a book authored in 1947 by Okte.
In that book Okte also traced the architects of the tax and named all
the governmental agencies and personnel engaged in administering the
tax.

In an otherwise officially secular state, taxpayers were classified
as Muslim and non-Muslim, denoted with the letters M and G,
respectively./2/ The latter included Jews and Christians, including
Armenians and Greeks. Assyrian Orthodox Christians also fell in that
class. An additional class of taxpayers were the Donme, denoted by D.
The Donme were Jews whose ancestors had converted to Islam in the 17th
century./3/ Like the Jews and Christians, the Donme were taxed at rates
higher than those that applied to Muslims. Foreigners were taxed at the
same rate as Muslim Turks.

During that period, Greeks were the largest minority group in Turkey,
and represented the heirs to Byzantium with Constantinople as its
capital. The Armenians originated from western Armenia or the eastern
half of Turkey, and represented the descendants of the first Christian
nation. The presence of the Jews also predates that of the Turks, whose
ranks had been augmented by Ladino Jews from Spain during the
Inquisition. The Assyrians are originally from southern Turkey and
modern-day Syria and Iraq; their presence also predates the arrival of
the Turks from central Asia. Combined, those non-Muslim groups made up
less than 1 percent of Turkey's population of 18 million in 1942.

The tax was initially envisaged as a tax on capital or wealth. It was
to apply to businesses and real estate (immovable property). By the time
it was enacted, it had expanded to include a tax on wages as well that
effectively applied only to non-Muslims in Istanbul. Taxpayers were
classified according to business type and property earnings. Within the
Ministry of Finance, once the size of income, wealth, and type of
enterprise were established internally, local assessment boards secretly
determined the amount owed by the taxpayer.

The Finance Ministry was responsible for setting the tax rates to be
used in computing tax assessments. Minorities were generally to be taxed
at 5 to 10 times the amount applied to Muslims with similar wealth.
Specifically, Muslims were to be taxed at the rate of 12.5 percent of
profits or earnings. In contrast, non-Muslims were to be statutorily
taxed at the rate of 50 percent of earnings plus an additional tax of up
to 50 percent of their wealth (Table 1)./4/ The reach of the tax also
extended to hospitals and educational institutions. The tax did not
extend to Muslim institutions, because they were owned or funded by the
government.

While internal "guidelines" set minimum and maximum limits, the local
boards at the Finance Ministry were free to choose any amount in
between. Indeed, they had complete discretion in setting assessments.
Information on income and wealth were obtained from Turkish national
banks, the Republican People's Party, and the Security Directorate,
which is equivalent to the U.S. FBI. Despite the lack of information on
the sources of wealth and income, taxpayer records were not requested or
considered when setting assessments.

The assessed tax was due in cash within 15 days from its published
date of December 17, 1942. Payments could be postponed for another 15
days, but would face a charge of up to 2 percent interest. If the tax
due was not fully settled within 30 days of assessment, the taxpayer's
property was to be confiscated. Furthermore, the taxpayer was to be sent
to a labor camp until his debt was discharged, under Regulation 21/19288
approved on January 12, 1943.

The Taxpayers

By August 1943 the tax assessments stood at some TRL 335 million in
Istanbul alone, or about one-half the entire currency in circulation.
Indeed, those assessments represented as much as the entire budget
revenues of TRL 394.3 million for 1942 before enactment of the tax.
Table 2 provides a summary of the number of taxpayers assessed and the
amount of assessments in Istanbul. Some 42,937 taxpayers were assessed a
total of TRL 305 million, as shown in Table 2./5/ Of those, only 3,973
were Muslims, who were assessed a total of TRL 24.4 million. In other
words, minorities who made up less than 1 percent of the population were
assessed 93 percent of the liability. Table 3 further provides
assessments for churches, synagogues, and schools./6/

In a survey of foreign chambers of commerce at the time, C.L.
Sulzberger, writing for The New York Times in 1943, documented the
discriminatory nature of the tax./7/ As illustrated in Table 4, the
effective rates of assessments that merchants faced varied considerably
from a low of under 5 percent for Muslims to over 150 percent for
Christian Greeks and Jews, to well over 200 percent for Christian
Armenians. Similarly, in one large enterprise, only 1.2 percent of the
Muslim employees were assessed compared with 96.1 percent for minority
citizens.

As illustrated by the head of the Finance Ministry and the person in
charge of implementing the tax, Faik Okte, assessments were determined
in arbitrary manners because the authorities lacked information on the
income and properties of the minority groups./8/ The arbitrary nature of
the tax is best illustrated in the treatment of the "extraordinary
rich." According to Okte, Mr. Bezmenler, whose ancestors converted from
Judaism to Islam in the 17th century and who was classified as a Donme,
was assessed TRL 1 million. In contrast, Dr. Cudi Birtek, an
extraordinarily wealthy Muslim, was assessed only TRL 25,000, a mere
fraction of the amount applied to the Donme./9/ In yet another example,
Osman Sakar, K.S. was originally assessed TRL 120,000. When Mr. Sakar
proved that he was a "pure Turk" or a Muslim, his tax liability was
adjusted downward to TRL 12,000 -- just 10 percent of the originally
published amount./10/ Those mistakes were not uncommon because all
citizens were forced to adopt Turkish-sounding surnames in 1935 and
because Turks have come to resemble more the Caucasians they conquered
and less their Asiatic ancestors from central Asia.

The discriminatory and confiscatory nature of this tax is also
evident in the treatment of non-Muslim institutions. According to
Sulzberger, a poorly equipped Armenian hospital in Istanbul, for
instance, was assessed TRL 39,000 compared with an assessment of TRL
2,500 for a modern and thriving American hospital. Muslim institutions
avoided taxation altogether./11/

Tax assessments were seriously flawed in particular because they
failed to consider any documents from the taxpayer. The tax due from a
Christian Armenian timber merchant, for instance, was three times his
entire fortune. The tax administrator informed him that his deportation
to the labor camp could not be prevented, even after all his wealth had
been confiscated./12/ At times the tax burden widely diverged in its
arbitrariness. A Jewish taxpayer had his tax assessment increased simply
because he argued with an assessor. In another example, a Christian
Armenian "was taxed excessively at the rate of TRL 400,000," reflecting
"the false allegation that he was the leader of the Armenian Tashnag
Society, an old member of the Union and Progress Party," better known in
the West as the Young Turk regime that governed Ottoman Turkey from 1909
through the end of World War I./13/ At the other extreme, another
Armenian was exempted from the labor camp because he had written
"favorable articles promoting Turkish interests in the French
press."/14/

The punitive nature of the tax was at times also extended to
foreigners. While foreigners were supposed to be taxed at the same low
rate as Muslims, many in fact were taxed at the higher rates that
applied to minority citizens. According to Faik Okte, the principal
administrator of the tax, that treatment was deliberate. He reports that
tax administrators were instructed to deny the foreigners' "privilege"
to Jews from the Axis states./15/ In addition, and under "the pretext of
the poor registration system," the property of Greeks and Armenians who
had acquired foreign citizenship was immediately auctioned off./16/

Of the first 45 deportees to labor camps, 21 were Jews, 13 were
Greeks, and 11 were Armenian. After the first deportation, it was
decided that the "elderly, women, the sick, foreign residents . . .
would not be exempted from the forced labor obligations."/17/ However,
there are no records of any women or foreigners ever sent to labor
camps.

Shortly after the government published its declaration to levy the
wealth tax, a Turkish professor contacted the Finance Ministry to
inquire about the details of the new tax. "Have you all gone mad?" was
his response after confirming that the new law did not provide for
appeals nor did it indicate rate of taxation./18/ Despite its insanity,
the tax shook the economy to its foundations.

Many Muslims were enriched by acquiring non-Muslim property at
bargain prices. However, those fire sales, or outright "confiscation" by
state-owned enterprises, often hindered economic growth and
entrepreneurship. Consider the case of the Banzilar and Benjamen
Company, a shipping company owned by two Jews that was forced to turn
over all of its five ships to the state-owned Maritime Lines in lieu of
taxes totaling TRL 1.6 million. Despite the rising value of ships and
Turkey's vast needs, those ships, which were productively employed by
their previous owners, remained idle at port./19/ In another example,
the majority of textile factory owners at the time were either Jewish or
Donme converts from Judaism. Yet, after World War II and repeal of the
tax, non-Muslim textile start-ups came to a screeching halt./20/

The Turkish wealth tax was advanced as part of a strategy to control
prices during the inflationary early years of World War II. The thinking
was that the forced sale of property and inventory within a fortnight of
the assessments would depress prices. Yet not only did that misguided
strategy fail to depress prices, the discriminatory nature of the tax
and the taxation of an entrepreneurial group to certain bankruptcy led
to a serious loss of confidence in the state and rattled financial
markets for years to come.

/2/ G denotes Gayrimuslim, or "other than Muslim" in Turkish,
borrowed from the Arabic ghayr Muslim.

/3/ The Donme, which means "apostates" in Turkish, are the followers
of the mystic Shabbetai Tzvi who converted to Islam on September 16,
1666. Tzvi was arrested in Constantinople on December 30, 1665, after he
announced that he would seize the crown of the Ottoman sultan and
reestablish the kingdom of Israel.

/4/ Okte, supra note 1, at 43. The wage tax was set at TRL 500 for
those with monthly wages under TRL 100, TRL 750 for those with wages of
TRL 101 to TRL 500, and so on.

/5/ Plus another TRL 30 million when taxpayers with omitted
affiliation are considered. See Okte, supra note 1, at 48.

Armenian Schools

16 ARMENIAN SCHOOLS IN TURKEY OPENS FIRST SEMESTER

Journal of Turkish Weekly
Sept 23 2005

ISTANBUL - The new education period has been started. The minority
schools also opened the education session. There are 16 Armenian
schools with 3219 students and 412 teachers. Many more Armenian
students attend the 'normal' schools.

This year about 454 children were registered to the Armenian
kindergartens. 2107 students were registered to the primary and
secondary schools. 658 Armenian students were registered to the
Armenian high schools.

Apart from the normal courses, the Turkish Armenian schools also give
Armenian language and Armenian religion courses to their students.

Patriarch Mesrop II, religious leader of Turkish Armenians, said that
the Armenian language courses and Armenian culture courses in these
schools are crucial to maintain the existence of Armenian minority
in Turkey. The main problem of the Armenian population in Turkey is
voluntary 'assimilation'. Many Armenians do not attend the Armenian
Church and Armenian schools. Another problem is the mixed marriages.

There are about 100.000 Armenians in Istanbul and they have all
the rights to take education in their own schools. Apart from the
Armenian schools there are Armenian health institutions, sport clubs
and cultural-social organizations. Moreover 3 Armenian newspaper are
published in Istanbul.

Apart from the Turkish Armenians, more than 50. 000 Armenians come
to ýstanbul to work from Armenia.

EU Entry: Turkey must recognise genocide

Turkey has rejected demands by the European Parliament that it recognise the
killing of Armenians as genocide before it can join the EU.

Armenians say that up to 1.5 million of their people were slaughtered in
mass killings under the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

But the Turkish government insists that the killing of Armenians was not a
systematic genocide. They maintain that a smaller number of Armenians died,
and that they perished unintentionally because of exposure, famine and
disease.

The request has angered Ankara, and the Turkish prime minister immediately
rejected the resolution.
"That resolution is not binding. It does not matter whether they took such a
decision or not. We will continue on our way," Recep Tayyip Erdogan told
private CNN-Turk television.

Situation of Armenians

FOR TURKEY'S ARMENIANS, PAINFUL PAST IS MUTED
By Anne Barnard

Boston Globe, MA
Nov 30 2006

ISTANBUL -- When Mesrob II, the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul and
All Turkey, meets today with Pope Benedict XVI, the one topic he says
he definitely won't bring up is the one that most intensely interests
his people around the world: the Armenian genocide.

Getting Turkey and the rest of the world to acknowledge the slaughter
of more than 1 million Armenians in the early 20th century, many by
troops of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, is a cherished goal of the
Armenian diaspora. The visit from the spiritual leader of 1 billion
Roman Catholics might seem the perfect opportunity not only to draw
attention to the problems of the tiny Christian minority here, but
also to ask the pontiff to press Turkey for an apology.

But for about 68,000 Turkish citizens of Armenian descent, who --
along with 20,000 to 30,000 people from neighboring Armenia who
have migrated here in search of jobs -- make up by far the largest
Christian community in Turkey, the situation is much more complicated,
even dangerous.

Armenians here must balance a deep need to preserve the memory of the
killings, known in Armenian as metz yeghern, or "the big calamity,"
with safeguarding the small community that remains, which to them means
avoiding conflict with the Muslim Turk majority or the nationalist
government. Turkish citizens who mention the killings -- including
Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish author who won the Nobel Prize this year --
have been charged with the crime of "insulting Turkishness," and risk
fines, jail sentences, and even death threats.

The Armenian community is treading cautiously around the pope's
visit. Leaders are seeking his support on general issues of religious
expression; during his first two days Benedict has already stressed
the importance of religious freedom. But they are being careful not to
embrace too closely a pontiff widely seen by Muslims as having insulted
Islam -- and they are avoiding any public reference to the genocide.

Many Armenians here say they have chosen to leave the past buried --
or partly buried -- in order to press for more immediate benefits.

They want to persuade the government to ease onerous restrictions,
such as laws that ban Christians from bequeathing land to the church or
running independent seminaries to train priests. And they want to live
in peace with the rest of this country of nearly 80 million people,
about 99 percent of whom are Muslim and overwhelmingly ethnically
Turkish.

Mesrob, the leader of the Armenian Orthodox Church here, is a case in
point. Speaking the confident English he perfected at Memphis State
University, he chose his words carefully in an hourlong conversation
with three foreign reporters.

Asked whether he would discuss the genocide with the pope, he said
he never brings up "local issues" with visiting dignitaries. Asked
whether he could state for the record that a genocide took place,
he fixed a reporter with a friendly gaze and was silent for a long
moment. Then he said, "I acknowledge that people were killed."

But Mesrob, 50, spoke more readily when asked what had happened to
his own family at the time. His grandfather's six brothers were all
deported from the town of Izmit, during a time when many Armenians
were shipped off to the Syrian desert. His grandfather, who escaped to
Istanbul and became a baker, never heard from them again. He assumed
most of them died.

Mesrob's parents and grandparents never told him the details. "They
never talked about it. They didn't want us to be at odds with our
Muslim neighbors," he said.

"There is no family that didn't share this situation," said Navart
Beren, 51, an administrator at St. Mary's Church, across the street
from the patriarch's residence on a winding street near the Sea of
Marmara, where she was attending Mass last Sunday. Her parents were
close-mouthed, too, she said: "They didn't want us to carry revenge
in our hearts."

"All that is in the past," said her friend Margarit Nalbantkazar, 52.

"But this did happen: My husband's father was 8 or 9 years old. He
saw them take his father by hitting him on the back of the head with
a gun. . . . They never saw him again."

Murat Belge, a Turkish academic who runs the publishing house that
prints Pamuk's books, explained why Armenians inside Turkey walk such
a fine line between forgetting and accusing.

Told of the patriarch's comments, Belge said: "If he had said there was
an Armenian genocide, it's very likely that he would be assassinated
by some fascists, the patriarchate would be burned, and Armenians
leading their daily lives would be shot by unknown people."

Turkey has always insisted that the deaths, most of them in 1915,
were part of a war in which a beleaguered Ottoman Empire was facing
Armenian rebels allied with its enemies, which included the United
States, Britain, and Russia.

But most historians agree that Armenians were systematically killed
and driven out. The subject is extremely sensitive in Turkey because
many of the military leaders of the dying Ottoman Empire went on to
found the secular Turkish republic in 1923.

Also in the 1920s, hundreds of thousands of Greek Orthodox Christians
were forced to leave Turkey as smaller numbers of Muslims were forced
out of Greece, under the agreement that established the Greek and
Turkish borders. Today, Christians make up less than 1 percent of
the population.

US policy on the Armenian deaths is to respect the position of Turkey,
an important NATO ally, though the 1.2 million Armenians in America
fiercely lobby Congress to recognize the genocide.

Pope John Paul II called the events a genocide in a 2000 document,
and in 2001 visited a memorial to the victims in Yerevan, Armenia's
capital. In a speech there, he avoided the term genocide but adopted
the Armenian phrase "big calamity."

The Vatican has given no indication of whether Benedict will mention
the issue.

Mesrob said he hoped the pope's visit would improve interfaith
relations, but whether it does "depends on what kind of language he's
going to use," he added with a chuckle. He said the pope's September
remarks, quoting a Byzantine ruler's criticism of Islam as violent,
"jeopardized" Christian minorities.

A metal detector and security checkpoint stand outside Mesrob's ornate
residence, and security will be extra tight during the pope's visit,
he said.

Mesrob said Turks do not bear all responsibility for the killings
of Armenians but have "the most important responsibility" because
"they were ruling the country." He said many people believe "ethnic
cleansing" was carried out to "remove Christians from public life."

When asked if Armenians in Turkey have a ceremony or memorial site to
commemorate the killings, he said that they do not, but that people
remember the date April 24, 1915, when Armenian intellectuals in
Istanbul were rounded up and deported, as a kind of "beheading of
the community."

Mesrob dismissed recent allegations that he forbids church officials
to speak of the killings. "It's not a question of silence," he said.

"How can you make friends with someone if you confront them?"

Instead, he recommends cultural exchanges between Armenia and Turkey
to pave the way for an honest discussion of the events, he said. In
the meantime, he said, when foreign governments raise the issue,
ethnic Armenians in Turkey get nervous.

Aida Barsegian, 56, a house cleaner who moved here from Armenia,
said it didn't help when France passed a law last month declaring it
a crime to deny the genocide. "If they care so much, they should open
the borders of France and let us find work there," she said after
lighting candles at the church. "Here they give me work."

Policy towards Armenia

Official Yerevan indicated on Friday that the Turkish government is sticking to its preconditions for normalizing relations with Armenia despite domestic calls for a policy change that followed the shock killing of a respected Turkish-Armenian journalist.

A spokesman for the Armenian Foreign Ministry said Deputy Foreign Minister Arman Kirakosian, who attended Dink’s funeral on Tuesday, met with a senior Turkish diplomat in Istanbul to discuss “possibilities of registering progress in Turkish-Armenian relations.”

“Differences in the parties’ positions on the discussed issues remain,” the official, Vladimir Karapetian, told RFE/RL, commenting on the meeting. Armenia hopes that Turkey “will take steps” to bridge those differences, he said.

The outpouring of sympathy in Turkey for the slain editor of the bilingual “Agos” weekly fueled talk of a possible softening of the long-standing Turkish policy towards Armenia. Turkish media commentators have urged Ankara to stop linking the establishment of diplomatic relations and reopening of the Turkish-Armenian border with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the decades-long campaign for international recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide.

While in Istanbul, Kirakosian reaffirmed his country’s readiness to normalize bilateral ties “without any preconditions.” “This is what Hrant Dink was working for and talking about,” he was reported to say.

But Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul made it clear on Wednesday that Yerevan should first “review its negative feelings against us and should not make unjust demands.” "We do not believe we can launch diplomatic ties by setting aside allegations of genocide," said another Turkish diplomat quoted by AFP news agency.

Neither official mentioned the other Turkish precondition: a solution to the Karabakh conflict acceptable to Azerbaijan, Turkey’s main regional ally.

Armenian Foundations Win Case At European Court

Today's Zaman
Dec 17 2008
Turkey

The European Court of Human Rights yesterday announced its ruling
that Turkey violated the property rights of two Armenian charitable
foundations by seizing immovable property belonging to the foundations.

At the Strasbourg-based court, the applicants -- Samatya Surp Kevork
Ermeni Kilisesi, Mektebi ve MezarlÄ±gÄ± VakfÄ± YÃ¶netim Kurulu
(The Board of Governors of the Samatya Surp Kevork Armenian Church,
School and Cemetery) and Yedikule Surp PÄ±rgic Ermeni Hastanesi
VakfÄ± (The Foundation for the Armenian Hospital in Yedikule) --
complained that previous decisions by Turkish courts had deprived
them of property that they had acquired through donations, as Turkish
courts had ruled that their charters did not give them the right to
acquire immovable property.

The court ruled that Turkey had violated Article 1 of Protocol No. 1
of the European Convention on Human Rights, which regulates the
protection of property. It refused to review the complaints under
Article 6, which covers the right to a fair hearing, and Article 14
of the convention, which prohibits discrimination.

Turkey is now required to return the immovable property in question to
the Samatya Surp Kevork Armenian Church, School and Cemetery in three
months or pay 600,000 euros in compensation. The court judges also
agreed that Turkey must pay 275,000 euros to the Foundation for the
Armenian Hospital in Yedikule in compensation for the seized property.

The judgment is expected to set a precedent for other possible
cases against Turkey which are concerned with the property rights of
non-Muslim foundations. Nationalist critics say non-Muslim foundations
should not be allowed to acquire immovable property while the European
Union, which Turkey aspires to join, urges Ankara to lift restrictions
on the property rights of these foundations.

In February, the Turkish Parliament adopted a new law on charitable
foundations that was mostly welcomed by the European Commission and
the European Parliament. In a report released in March, the European
Parliament, however, stated that the new law should be analyzed by
the European Commission as to whether it is being implemented in line
with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

Both Armenian foundations were established by Imperial Decree in
1832 under the Ottoman Empire and are recognized in Turkish law. The
European Court of Human Rights said their charter complies with the
provisions of the Lausanne Treaty affording protection to foundations
that provide public services for religious minorities.

Turkey has the right to appeal the judgment at the Grand Chamber of
the European Court of Human Rights. In a 2007 decision, the court
announced that Turkey and the Foundation for the Yedikule Armenian
Hospital had reached a friendly settlement in a similar case filed
by the Armenian foundation.

AZERBAIJANIS GET HELP FROM TURKEY

Although the president of Turkey, when visiting Washington, said that Turkey will keep out of the conflict between the Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Armenians have captured from the Azen Turks bulletproof vests made in NATO countries. These are on display in Yerevan, Armenia.

Turkey, since the mid-'70s has smuggled weapons into Azerbaijan through the adjoining region. This confirms what Soviet dissidents, including the late Andrei Sakharov have stated for (Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA), 262 words.)

Timeline

Jan. 19, 2007: Hrant Dink, editor of the Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, is slain by a gunman in Istanbul.

Dec. 19, 2006: Writer Ipek Calislar acquitted of insulting Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in a biography in which she said Atatürk dressed as a woman to escape an assassination attempt.

Nov. 1, 2006: Archaeologist Ilmiye Cig acquitted of inciting religious hatred by claiming that Islamic-style head scarves were first used more than 5,000 years ago by priestesses initiating young men into sex.

Sept. 21, 2006: Author Elif Safak acquitted of "insulting Turkishness" for her fictional characters' statements about the killings of Armenians.

July 27, 2006: Writer and journalist Perihan Magden acquitted of turning people against military service by defending a conscientious objector in her weekly magazine column.

July 11, 2006: A court confirmed a six-month sentence imposed on Dink for "attempting to influence the judiciary" after his newspaper ran articles criticizing a law that makes it a crime to "insult Turkishness."

Feb. 7, 2006: A trial adjourned for five prominent Turkish journalists charged with insulting the country's courts by criticizing the court-ordered closure of an academic conference on the Armenian issue. Two nationalist lawyers are removed after a fight breaks out in the courtroom.

Jan. 23, 2006: A court drops charges of "insulting Turkishness" against author Orhan Pamuk on a technicality. Pamuk was charged after discussing the deaths of Armenians in Turkey with a Swiss newspaper. He won the Nobel Prize for literature later in the year.